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Updated: June 25, 2025
With a little sigh of content, Nasmyth settled himself in a canvas chair, and glanced out between the slender pillars of the cool veranda at the wall of dusky forest and the flashing sea. "Ah," he replied, "can you doubt it, my dear lady? After logging camp and mine and city, this is an enchanted land. I think it is always summer afternoon at Bonavista." Mrs. Acton smiled at him graciously.
"My object is to borrow money," he explained frankly. "I couldn't resent it in the least if you sent me on to somebody else." "I'll hear what you have to say in the first case," replied Acton. "You had better explain exactly how you stand." Nasmyth did so as clearly as he could, and Acton looked at him thoughtfully for a moment or two. "I've been partly expecting this," he observed.
There was evidently very little going on in the town that afternoon. Here and there a man leaned heavy-eyed, as if unaccustomed to the brightness, on the balustrade in front of a store, and raucous voices rose from one or two second-rate saloons, but there were few other signs of life, and Nasmyth was not sorry when they reached the wooden hotel. Acton stopped a moment in front of the building.
I see from your sketch that basalts of great thickness, and in some views beautifully columnar, do underlie the lignite bed; but I am not quite sure that these columnar basalts are those precisely which are called the Causeway. I had never heard before that the Giant's Causeway rested on chalk, which all the basalts in your sketch do. By James Nasmyth.
If Mr. Nasmyth had accomplished nothing more than the invention of his steam-hammer, it would have been enough to found a reputation. Professor Tomlinson describes it as "one of the most perfect of artificial machines and noblest triumphs of mind over matter that modern English engineers have yet developed."
That, at least, was a thing they owed to themselves, and they toiled for an hour or two very much as they had done in the darkness; only that fresh logs were now coming down on them every few minutes, and at last they recognized that they were beaten. Then they went back dejectedly, and Nasmyth sat down to breakfast, though he had very little appetite.
The little gap into which the sunlight shone, however, had been hewn out at the cost of several years of strenuous labour, and Nasmyth, who was aware of this, felt inclined to smile as the man who owned it strolled up to him. It was a little difficult to imagine that he had had any great share in the making of that clearing.
I am convinced that it was I alone who remembered at that moment the life we were really leading at that time. With me there walked this skeleton through every waking hour that was to follow. I shall endeavor not to refer to it again. Yet it should not be forgotten that my skeleton was always there. "It certainly is not necessary in my case," replied Nasmyth, still as stiff as any poker.
It is a fight that is usually hardest for the man who thinks, and in which the one thing that counts is the brutal, bulldog valour that takes hold and holds on in spite of each crushing blow. "This high water," said Gordon, "has kept you back considerably." "It has," Nasmyth replied with emphasis. "It has cost me more money that I care to figure up the last month, and we're considerably behind.
Its advantages were so obvious, that its adoption soon became general, and in the course of a few years Nasmyth steam-hammers were to be found in every well-appointed workshop both at home and abroad. Many modifications have been made in the tool, by Condie, Morrison, Naylor, Rigby, and others; but Nasmyth's was the father of them all, and still holds its ground.
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